Jane Hall, Kleinman, Fairley, Brajer, The Institute for Economic and Environmental Studies, California State University, Fullerton, CA 92634, October 1994; To order call ,BAAQMD (415) 771-6000: San Francisco, CA USA. p. 80 pages.
This entry is the executive summary from the Final Report to the Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD) of the extensive costs associated with fine particulate pollution and by implication - wood smoke.) The report estimates the cost of PM10 pollution in the Bay Area to be $2 billion. Order the entire paper from the BAAQMD

Annual cost of not reducing PM10 (Particulate matter smaller than 10 microns) in the San Francisco Bay Area: $2.1 Billion and 1,098 deaths.

Health cost of wood burning alone is $1.1 Billion.

Cost of 1 fire to society: $40. (20 pounds wood)

Reducing Ozone is expensive, reducing fine particulate by stopping wood fires in all their forms would be almost free. (Cost to reduce ozone in the San Francisco Bay Area: $1 billion with health savings of $5.3 million.) "Simply banning or limiting wood
fires could potentially save many lives at little or no cost"
(Fairley, 1994).

Are we as a nation pursuing a false economy regardless of the
price? We have spent billions cleaning up autos and factories
while the most polluting of available home energy sources, wood
combustion has remained untouched. Trees are a sacred cash cow.
We all love to gaze into a fire 'and loose ourselves' but at what
cost?

We take forest fires seriously. We don't like homes or people
being incinerated. Yet the press never mentions the severe health
effects of breathing the smoky air that blankets a fire in action.
(President Clinton authorized $2.9 billion up from $1.8 billion
in 2000 to fight US forest fires summer 2001. President
Bush in August, 2001 committed billions to a ten year plan to
prevent forest fires.) Yet as a country the US has not chosen
to encourage clean air for its citizens.

For our study area of San Francisco $1 billion is spent each
year on regulations to reduce ozone which is worst in the summer.
The 1994 Fullerton San Francisco Bay Area Economic Report (Hall,
1995) estimates that $5.3 million in health benefits will result
from these smog-reducing controls. The value of successful cleanup
of car pollution for this area is attributed with yearly health
savings of $604 million.

It estimates that the yearly loss to the Bay Area from PM2.5 pollution
is $2.1 billion. The cost of wood burning was $1.1 billion per
year. Fewer than 15% of the population burning wood for home heating and
ambiance, costs six million people both in health, well being
and quality of life but also in real dollars. Each pound of wood
burned costs the entire community $2 in increased medical costs
and lost work days. That is equivalent to $40 for an average fire
burning 20 pounds of wood. "Simply banning or limiting wood
fires could potentially save many lives at little or no cost"
(Fairley, 1994).

The question that we must face is why the government and our "Air
Quality Districts" and Environmental Agencies refuse to clear
our air with the most cost effective decisions.

Medical costs continue to increase. Why not decrease pollution
to promote better health as the Fullerton study recommends? It
is cheaper to be well.

What is our habit of solid fuel combustion costing us? Who
is footing the bill? Some hidden costs of wood heat are increased
neighborhood pollution levels resulting in suburban corridors
of illness, lost wages, lost school time and sudden death. Let's
look at the human and dollar cost and the value of raw wood in
several ways.

The Added Value of Manufacturing Wood Products

Wood burning is big business but it could be argued that wood
is too valuable to burn. In North Carolina, 4th largest wood producer
in the US, manufacturing wood products provides 145,000 people
jobs with an annual payroll of $3.5 billion. Similar figures were
not available on the web for the politically embattled California
Timber Industry, which is the largest state wood producer.

North Carolina lists for us what we could do with a cord of wood.

By manufacturing wood products we increase jobs and add value to our natural resources. We increase our productivity as a nation. Wood builds houses, fences, salad bowls, furniture, kitchen cabinets, musical instruments and much more. Value is added to the raw wood. A cord of wood may be just the cost of labor, gasoline, chain saw supplies and hauling (called free wood in the US) or as much as $400. Burn it up and it is gone. It turns into a small amount of heat and a large amount of air pollution that will set up a value lost equation.

1 cord of wood is 8 feet by 4 feet by 4 feet
Value in what it can produce:
30 Boston rockers (chairs) or
12 dining room tables that each seat eight people or
1,200 copies of National Geographic magazine or
61,370 No. 10 envelopes or
460,000 personal checks or
1,000 to 2,000 pounds of paper (depending on the process used)
or
89,870 sheets of letterhead bond paper or
942 one-pound books or
4,384,000 commemorative-size postage stamps or
7,500,000 toothpicks

What is Solid Fuel Combustion Costing Us? "The alleged popularity and benefit of heating with wood
or other solid fuels is simply not justified by the expense, detrimental
health impacts of "second hand" wood smoke, fire hazards,
and poor heating performance of wood stoves. Newspapers &
magazines as well as movies & television that promote the
use of wood stoves and fireplaces as being romantic and natural
do not responsibly present the detrimental health and safety ramifications
of heating with solid fuels nor do they discuss more cost-effective
alternatives that would promote improved energy conservation,
health and safety. (Freedman, 2001)."

"In most areas of California you will pay more to heat
with wood than to heat with gas. CA ARB, 2001"

For our study area of San Francisco $1 billion is spent each year
on regulations to reduce ozone which is worst in the summer. The
1994 Fullerton San Francisco Bay Area Economic Report (Hall, 1995)
estimates that $5.3 million in health benefits will result from
these smog-reducing controls. The value of successful cleanup
of car pollution for this area is attributed with yearly health
savings of $604 million.
It estimates that the yearly loss to the Bay Area from PM2.5 pollution
is $2.1 billion. The cost of wood burning was $1.1 billion per
year. 15% of the population burning wood for home heating and
ambiance, costs six million people both in health, well being
and quality of life but also in real dollars. Each pound of wood
burned costs the entire community $2 in increased medical costs
and lost work days. That is equivalent to $40 for an average fire
burning 20 pounds of wood. "Simply banning or limiting wood
fires could potentially save many lives at little or no cost"
(Fairley, 1994).

The question that we must face is why the government and our "Air
Quality Districts" and Environmental Agencies refuse to clear
our air with the most cost effective decisions.

Medical costs continue to increase. Why not decrease pollution
to promote better health as the Fullerton study recommends? It
is cheaper to be well.

Perception is Everything

A rhapsody on wax logs:"They could see the white suburbs
with their twinkling lights and swimming pools, the sprawling
black townships, covered by a murky coating of smoke from a multitude
of paraffin and wood fires, the long, flat roads radiation out
to all corners and the bleak dirt mounds, the discarded debris
of the race for South Africa's gold." (EVERY SECRET THING
, My Family, My Country Gillian Slovo Little, Brown, and CO. PP
282,.P.133)

Timber companies are selling wood for burning and sawdust and paper garbage as wax sawdust logs and compressed pellets. The sawdust logs and pellets are sold as less polluting. They are actually expensive and polluting. The quote from G. Slovo, above, shows a different attitude in other parts of the world.

Below is a quote from New York State - it is talking about the stench of pig farms but it could be translated to Napa county, California with it's cows and it's choking wood smoke. In fact methane, ammonia and wood smoke are a quality of life issue all around the country.

"You like to think of a wine region as something that's a little bit more upscale, and it's kind of hard to be upscale if the air doesn't smell too good." -ANNE PARKER, a tourism official in New York's Finger Lakes region, on the area's growing hog industry. (http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/12/nyregion/12PIGS.html?todaysheadlines)

At last an Iowa Senator proposed a tax credit for collecting and using agricultural methane as a fuel this year. (Chinese farmers collect and use methane fuel.) Conserving energy is saving money and saving the environment. Methane burns much cleaner than wood.

Consumer Reports, February 2002 (updated costs: see Engineer 2007)
Up in smoke
How economical is heating with wood? Split wood sells for roughly $150 a cord (delivered). If it's a true cord--a stack 8 feet long, 4 feet deep, and 4 feet high--the price is 40 percent cheaper than natural gas or fuel oil for equivalent energy, national average prices suggest. A "cord run," however, is a single stack of 16-inch logs that is one-third the volume of a true cord. A $150 cord run is 75 percent pricier than other heating fuels, assuming the stack of hardwood is 70 percent solid, contains 12 percent moisture, and provides 7,700 Btu/lb.
Burning wood can be inefficient. At best, 25 to 30 percent of the heat energy from a wood-burning fireplace goes toward warming the room. The rest is lost up the chimney. A fireplace insert or a wood stove might reach 70 percent efficiency, but you lose the coziness of the fire. By contrast, a new gas or oil boiler or a furnace is 80 percent efficient or more. Bottom line: A central heating system is typically the cheapest way to heat.